Secure Data Center Networking with Open vSwitch

Abstract

Data centers have become the nextgeneration computing platforms for enterprises and Internet users. This is primarily due to the economic and technical advantages of resource sharing in data centers. By sharing computing and storage resources through services such as cloud computing or software-as-a-service (SaaS), users can amortize the cost of hardware and software. Because of the virtualization of resources, a new virtualized network access layer has been introduced to interconnect VMs within the data centers. In data center, hosts have been recently employed virtual switch to interconnect virtual machines (VMs) within data center networks. Virtual Switch is essential to control and manage VM within the hosts. Open vSwitch, a network switch specifically built for Xen virtualization environment is presented. The design and advantages of Open vSwitch is described. And then secure VM networking is proposed by using Open vSwitch. By combining Intrusion Detection System with Open vSwitch, more secure virtual networking can be established because Open vSwitch can get inter VM traffic logs directly and can perform more controls VM communication.